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Ubuntu maker Canonical has signed a deal with the Chinese government to create a new version of Ubuntu. For China, this is widely seen as an attempt "to wean its IT sector off Western software in favour of more home-grown alternatives," the BBC reported.

In other words, it's an attempt to move from Windows to Linux. According to NetMarketshare statistics, Windows has 91.62 percent market share on the desktop in China, compared to 1.21 percent for Linux. The other 7.17 percent is OS X.

China is developing a new reference architecture for operating systems, based on Ubuntu. The Chinese version of Ubuntu—called Ubuntu Kylin—will be released next month in conjunction with Ubuntu's regular release cycle.

"Ubuntu Kylin goes beyond language localisation and includes features and applications that cater for the Chinese market," Canonical said in its announcement. "In the 13.04 release, Chinese input methods and Chinese calendars are supported, there is a new weather indicator, and users can quickly search across the most popular Chinese music services from the Dash. Future releases will include integration with Baidu maps and leading shopping service Taobao, payment processing for Chinese banks, and real-time train and flight information. The Ubuntu Kylin team is cooperating with WPS, the most popular office suite in China, and is creating photo editing and system management tools which could be incorporated into other flavours of Ubuntu worldwide."

This won't just be a desktop operating system. Canonical said "future work will extend beyond the desktop to other platforms" such as servers, tablets, and phones. To work on the software, Canonical and China have set up a joint lab in Beijing to host engineers from Canonical and Chinese government agencies.

Linux will finally dominate market share, and all it took was the backing of a totalitarian government.

Jokes aside, if this actually catches on outside of government, people will have much more secure systems--since the majority of Windows installs in China are pirated and malware-laden. That said, one wonders what kind of back doors and monitoring capabilities will be included with this OS.

You raise an interesting point. Linux (and OS X) avoid being targeted by malware developers, to some extent, because they are a small target.

Roll forward 5 - 10 years when Linux is dominant in China (and gains consummate adoption elsewhere), and now Linux has become a really big target.

It will be interesting to see how much China wants a secure OS for it's government, and how much it wants to facilitate national security based search and monitoring.

Maybe they will just start coding in Chinese and no western hackers will be able to understand the code base (joking - I know it's trivial to translate source code, although not so much for comments and documentation).

While being a small target (on desktops) is helpful, the bigger factor is that it's simply built with a more robust security model in the first place. Even now, with all the admittedly big improvements MSFT has made, Windows is still built and designed as a single-user, non-networked OS. There are actually exploits that allow permissions for hardware access to be propagated to unauthorized users so long as an authorized user is logged in at the same time (via "switch user" on the lock screen).

Even then, it's only on the desktop and to a lesser extent enterprise email (and sharepoint victims) that linux is a small target, because linux has a supermajority for embedded devices, anything web-facing, supercomputers, and really servers in general. They are already a massive target, just not for credit card numbers. This would tend to indicate that taking over the desktop wouldn't have a massive impact, because the system tends to be more robust in the first place, esoecially when properly configured.

nibb wrote:

The reason for this, is because the US recently announced they would retaliate with cyber attacks or create special units for cyber warfare. So China wants to move away from US software. This means more or less that the government was aware and completely knows they are behind some sponsored state attacks. This is just one more proof to it, now they want to try get as many Chinese users off from Windows, which can be potentially used against them, in some cyber-war, all MS needs to do is send some update and they control all systems in China. Bad for Ubuntu, great for the rest of us. At least all system administrators now will only need to block or tag users with Ubuntu as suspicious and we are rid of attacks, spam and bonnets for good. If China uses mostly another OS they will do us all a huge favor but letting us classify Chinese computers and traffic separated from the rest of the net. Bad for Ubuntu because their OS is going to go to hell, after Ubuntu is mostly used for malicious traffic. Im very sorry for generalizing, but their government is a joke when it comes to fight digital crimes online. Bank wires are send to China, Spam, Attacks, Child Porn, you name it, their government does absolutely nothing to punish or investigate this groups that most of the world considers Chineses internet traffic now to be crap. This means they are hurting their own legal companies and population that use Internet for good reasons by not cracking down on this activities. On another part, is this is actually great to get rid of all this pirated and non patches systems. Maybe all their systems are going to be more secure vs running XP pirated.

How stupid are you? Do you realize how trivial it is to replace user agent strings? That single fact has been inflating IE usage numbers for decades, thanks to sites that used to intentionally not work if they didn't see IE. It is trivial to mask what OS a given system is running from active fingerprinting, and as easy as taking a breath to mask the origin OS of a transmitted message.

So whatever happened to Red Flag Linux? Why didn't that make more impact in China, and why would Ubuntu do better? Is the goal just to switch from RH to Ubuntu as the "parent" distro?

I interpreted this story to at least imply that this would also include the new Unbutu Phone OS, which would give Unbutu a HUGE leg up in the Chinese market, which, in turn, would also trickle out to the West or at least give Canonical enough cash to finance a serious play for the West.

Did anyone else see it this way? Or am I makin' stuff up again?

Stop. Saying. Unbutu. You sound incompetent when you say that.

Ubuntutu is a silly name. I wouldn't use any software called that. And I use Snoop - http://snoopwpf.codeplex.com/ - which has a dog sniffing poo as it's icon, so my standarts are fairly low.But Ungubu is just damn retarded.

What could go wrong by allowing a dictatorship with a penchant for theft of intellectual property and surveillance to contribute code to Ubuntu?

nothing more wrong than a quasi-dictatorship with a penchant for invasion, civilian slaughter and illegal detension. (I'm talking about USA if you can't figure that one out).

I was going to say something about how America isn't so dictatorship-ey these days, but then I remembered that all of the PATRIOT stuff is stil en force, and in any event, the conservative side of the aisle in the House has realized you can get a de facto dictatorship by being so intractable and unreasonable that mere extremism seems like a better recourse than apocalypse.

i suppose this is because Microsoft are always complaining about China using cracked versions of windows. i guess now Microsoft will be complaining that no one, not even the Chinese think Windows is worth bothering about and are going their own way. perhaps if they had priced things accordingly, this situation would not be evolving. people/companies/countries will only put up with having shit chucked at them for so long. sooner or later, they will rebel. looks like that time is now as far as Microsoft is concerned!

I don't think it's that. China doesn't care about its folks using knock-off, cracked or ripped software. What they do care about is securing themselves from foreign threats. The problem with the underground digital market is two fold

1) things still costs $. Even though it's ultra-cheap by our standards, it's still a nice chunk of change for what the avg worker in China gets paid. Just like we bitch about upgrading from WinXP to Win7 or 8 b/c of high licensing cost, the avg person there won't want to upgrade, b/c they simply can't afford even the small amount of cash the underground vendors are charging for the cracked version. Likewise, since it's cracked, they're not sure if they can trust it. Just as Russian bot-nets are exploiting computers world-wide, I'm sure the Chinese Triads are exploiting the underground digital market to sell hacked / cracked copies of Windows they can easily take control of using a bot-net of their own. We just don't hear about it much, b/c the Triads exploit their own folks quietly while Russian bot-netters are casting their net across the whole flippin world.

2) when citizens buy the cracked software, it means the politicians have less control of them. How do you get rid of an illegal underground? Offer a competing product that's free, professionally supported, etc, etc. Some folks may think "gee, I can pay to get a cracked copy of Windows, with god-know's what's wrong with it that my shady vendor has hacked into it, or I can get the official gov't software that has all kinds of spyware attached ... but it's my politicians spying on me instead of russian hackers."

Plus, I think China's seeing a lot of cyber-warfare taking advantage of out-dated Windows systems to cripple infrastructure. It's probably easier to push to update/upgrade systems when you're not looking at a huge f'ing licensing bill for new software to do so.

What could go wrong by allowing a dictatorship with a penchant for theft of intellectual property and surveillance to contribute code to Ubuntu?

nothing more wrong than a quasi-dictatorship with a penchant for invasion, civilian slaughter and illegal detension. (I'm talking about USA if you can't figure that one out).

It's not a dictatorship, it's a republic which uses a representative democracy, that just happens to only represent corporate and other extremely well-funded interests instead of its actual citizens. Also, you'll be hard-pressed to support the "civilian slaughter" allegation, as everyone else has been (everything seems to be baseless anecdote and hearsay). As for illegal detention and invasion, you're spot on with that, at least.

Government blessing doesn't matter... China has a long history of the government dictating one domestically developed technology or another to replace whatever foreign tech, then when the public doesn't enthusiastically adopt it, just letting it slide.

It's true of everything from DVDs to CPUs, and much much more that doesn't immediately come to mind. Like most such dictatorial technology decisions, this OS will very, very likely see minimal adoption, then just fall by the wayside and quietly disappear.

Politically it solves the piracy issue with the US over Windows and MSOffice because Ubuntu is free and can not be pirated.

That depends on your point of view. Some people take the view that if anyone anywhere in the world doesn't follow US (or WTO etc, or whatever specific perspective they have) intellectual property law and use software without a licence, then they are pirating.

So if China branches Linux and makes it closed source, some people would see that as pirating.

Other people would see national sovereignty as paramount, as if China (or the US) wants to implement it's own IP regime, with whatever exceptions and limitations it wants, then it should be able to do that within it's own borders.

I think there is an exception in US IP law that says the US military can use any IP without paying for it, or even acknowledging it.

No, there is no such exemption in US law. The military, as with any other corporate or government agency, must VERY carefully track how many installs of a given piece of software are installed, and on what machines (so you can reuse licenses when they're uninstalled or the computer is sent to DRMO). You need to be careful not to exceed the number of licenses offered in thst particular volume license agreement. The only companies thst don't need to do this are ones that use no proprietary software (and then MSFT has a history of sending auditors anyway, because how could someone possibly do business without MSFT?)

Jim Salter wrote:

sporkwitch wrote:

They're fairly core features in Linux; it doesn't matter how barebones you go, you'll have SSH.

Um, what? No. In fact, if you install Ubuntu Server from a standard medium, you won't have SSH unless you explicitly check a box that's off by default. (Which pretty much everybody does, but the point remains, SSH is off by default.)

I think you're mistaking starting up the daemon for the service not being there. "Pretty much everybody" uses SSH for primary administration, possibly with some form of web based administration tool like webmin. I can't say I've ever even seen a non-headless server outside of a true amateur's basement.

What could go wrong by allowing a dictatorship with a penchant for theft of intellectual property and surveillance to contribute code to Ubuntu?

nothing more wrong than a quasi-dictatorship with a penchant for invasion, civilian slaughter and illegal detension. (I'm talking about USA if you can't figure that one out).

It's not a dictatorship, it's a republic which uses a representative democracy, that just happens to only represent corporate and other extremely well-funded interests instead of its actual citizens. Also, you'll be hard-pressed to support the "civilian slaughter" allegation, as everyone else has been (everything seems to be baseless anecdote and hearsay). As for illegal detention and invasion, you're spot on with that, at least.

I see, they are only civilians when they are American.

I have a standing invitation open for people to submit non-anecdotal evidence, evidence that could actually withstand even the most basic of scrutiny. In trying myself to find some, and in asking for those making the same allegations as you to provide some, no one ever has (in fact, they usually point to five articles all referencing the same anecdotal report devoid of ANY actual evidence). I would be in no way surprised to know that the US was less discriminate than they claim to be, but the fact is, there's simply nothing remotely credible to base it on. It's not like the way the US keeps putting totalitarian regimes in power only to have to go in and remove them later; there IS solid evidence of that. Where is the credible evidence of widespread and indiscriminate slaughter of civilians? Where is there indication of more than a few tragic incidents of people losing it, or bad intel? The allegation, after all, is of indifference, not hurting the kid standing next to the target.

This seems potentially huge for Ubuntu, and therefore a 'great leap forward' (sorry...) for Linux on the desktop. Will be interesting to see how Canonical negotiate the moral issues of working with the Chinese government (in particular with regard to censorship, limiting freedom of expression).

The Chinese government wouldn't need to "cooperate" with Canonicals if they create a fork.

Obviously, the government would have to open-source their modifications as well to be compliant, but nobody really can enforce that, especially on Chinese officials..

I have a standing invitation open for people to submit non-anecdotal evidence, evidence that could actually withstand even the most basic of scrutiny. In trying myself to find some, and in asking for those making the same allegations as you to provide some, no one ever has (in fact, they usually point to five articles all referencing the same anecdotal report devoid of ANY actual evidence). I would be in no way surprised to know that the US was less discriminate than they claim to be, but the fact is, there's simply nothing remotely credible to base it on. It's not like the way the US keeps putting totalitarian regimes in power only to have to go in and remove them later; there IS solid evidence of that. Where is the credible evidence of widespread and indiscriminate slaughter of civilians? Where is there indication of more than a few tragic incidents of people losing it, or bad intel? The allegation, after all, is of indifference, not hurting the kid standing next to the target.

Historically speaking, there is the fire bombing of Germany, and Japan, and of course the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Then there's the widespread use of carpet bombing, napalm and agent orange in SE Asia.

And of course the widely documented slaughter in Central America, some of which at least was co-ordinated by the CIA.

And more recently, many people see the US military invasion as the proximate cause of the 100,000s of dead civilians in Iraq.

In each case you may see the action as having been necessary, or the consequences as unforeseeable, or in some other way justifiable.

Some people see the US as responsible for the dead, either through intent or negligence.

What could go wrong by allowing a dictatorship with a penchant for theft of intellectual property and surveillance to contribute code to Ubuntu?

nothing more wrong than a quasi-dictatorship with a penchant for invasion, civilian slaughter and illegal detension. (I'm talking about USA if you can't figure that one out).

As an anarchist, I'm no fan of the U.S. government (or any government), but to compare the U.S. government to the Chinese government is pretty stupid. I detest what the U.S. government is becoming, but it's not yet anywhere close to the totalitarian nature of China's government.

I have a standing invitation open for people to submit non-anecdotal evidence, evidence that could actually withstand even the most basic of scrutiny. In trying myself to find some, and in asking for those making the same allegations as you to provide some, no one ever has (in fact, they usually point to five articles all referencing the same anecdotal report devoid of ANY actual evidence). I would be in no way surprised to know that the US was less discriminate than they claim to be, but the fact is, there's simply nothing remotely credible to base it on. It's not like the way the US keeps putting totalitarian regimes in power only to have to go in and remove them later; there IS solid evidence of that. Where is the credible evidence of widespread and indiscriminate slaughter of civilians? Where is there indication of more than a few tragic incidents of people losing it, or bad intel? The allegation, after all, is of indifference, not hurting the kid standing next to the target.

Historically speaking, there is the fire bombing of Germany, and Japan, and of course the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Then there's the widespread use of carpet bombing, napalm and agent orange in SE Asia.

And of course the widely documented slaughter in Central America, some of which at least was co-ordinated by the CIA.

And more recently, many people see the US military invasion as the proximate cause of the 100,000s of dead civilians in Iraq.

In each case you may see the action as having been necessary, or the consequences as unforeseeable, or in some other way justifiable.

Some people see the US as responsible for the dead, either through intent or negligence.

I totally get that (though would put forward that technological limitations in the past made it more difficult to limit civilian casualties compared to now; there were no GBUs during vietnam, for example), the current claims are outright indifference to the point of not even doing a modicum of dilligence before striking a target. The most common "evidence" i've seen was an anecdotal report whose strongest "evidence" was missile debris and a photo of a dead child, with nothing more than words to link the debris to the photo. Of all the fact-based reports i've found, the conclusion is always the same: there's no real evidence in either direction for the recent accusations. A lack of evidence is not proof of existence (no matter how much the religious say lack of explanation means god did it) nor does it proove non-existence (as most atheists and agnostics acknowledge.) It does, however, mean that we can't run with hasty conclusions or generalizations, and must base our arguments and ideas on what we do have evidence for. By all means, keep looking (as I said, I wouldn't be surprised to see it, given the direction the US has been heading the last couple decades), but I can't ignore a lack of evidence, and sensationalism based on hearsay and anecdote from all sides, just to say what I think is plausible is the truth.

I guess it's only fair. Linux and China go hand in hand. Both are trying to break free from the status quo, both are powers in certain areas and are looking to expand on to a more consumer market, and most importantly, both are governed by lunatics.

Edit: Go ahead fanboys, downrate me. But while Linus may be a brilliant man, he is also a stubborn douche, and unfortunately, the Linux community is filled with guys like him. You just have to follow the mailing lists to see how many good ideas get thrown out the garbage bin because these wannabe-leaders just don't feel like it.

Some people see the US as responsible for the dead, either through intent or negligence.

I totally get that (though would put forward that technological limitations in the past made it more difficult to limit civilian casualties compared to now; there were no GBUs during vietnam, for example), the current claims are outright indifference to the point of not even doing a modicum of dilligence before striking a target.[/quote]

Laser guided bombs were first used in combat in 1968 in the Vietnam War.

The first combat use of a guided weapon by US forces was in WWII although they were very primitive at the time. Generally the cost and complexity of use has limited the deployment of PGMs and even in the first Gulf War, the vast majority of bombs dropped were, I believe, unguided.

I'm sure that the most important consideration for China is that they can see all of the source code, and can assure themselves that the Chinese government isn't running whatever back doors the NSA has arranged to be inserted into Windows. Remember, for all the hype about Chinese hackers, some of the most aggressive state-backed "cyber warfare" has been launched by the USA (to sabotage the Iranian nuclear fuel enrichment program).

I'm sure that they will build from source themselves, and not trust binaries shipped by Canonical. They can add back doors of their own (if they are foolish, because others will find them).

If this article had been about the US government adopting Ubuntu for America, how popular would my comment be if I had said something like "There goes Ubuntu's free status. The corporation owned government of America will no doubt exploit it now so it can increase the gap between rich and poor. They'll close the source and use it to attack other countries infrastructure. They'll find a way to use it to sell more guns and keep the population afraid of bad guys."

What could go wrong by allowing a dictatorship with a penchant for theft of intellectual property and surveillance to contribute code to Ubuntu?

nothing more wrong than a quasi-dictatorship with a penchant for invasion, civilian slaughter and illegal detension. (I'm talking about USA if you can't figure that one out).

It's not a dictatorship, it's a republic which uses a representative democracy, that just happens to only represent corporate and other extremely well-funded interests instead of its actual citizens. Also, you'll be hard-pressed to support the "civilian slaughter" allegation, as everyone else has been (everything seems to be baseless anecdote and hearsay). As for illegal detention and invasion, you're spot on with that, at least.

There isn't really as big of a difference between the US and China governments. Here in the US, they're usually pretty good about giving you an "illusion of freedom and choice". The corrupt end result isn't really different. It's a government for the corporate and moneyed interests.

What could go wrong by allowing a dictatorship with a penchant for theft of intellectual property and surveillance to contribute code to Ubuntu?

nothing more wrong than a quasi-dictatorship with a penchant for invasion, civilian slaughter and illegal detension. (I'm talking about USA if you can't figure that one out).

It's not a dictatorship, it's a republic which uses a representative democracy, that just happens to only represent corporate and other extremely well-funded interests instead of its actual citizens. Also, you'll be hard-pressed to support the "civilian slaughter" allegation, as everyone else has been (everything seems to be baseless anecdote and hearsay). As for illegal detention and invasion, you're spot on with that, at least.

There isn't really as big of a difference between the US and China governments. Here in the US, they're usually pretty good about giving you an "illusion of freedom and choice". The corrupt end result isn't really different. It's a government for the corporate and moneyed interests.

It's not like I live in either country so I don't really know, but I've passed by and I can tell you, I'd rather have that illusion of freedom than none at all. The amount of censorship in China is way more than what you find in any regular western country.

What could go wrong by allowing a dictatorship with a penchant for theft of intellectual property and surveillance to contribute code to Ubuntu?

nothing more wrong than a quasi-dictatorship with a penchant for invasion, civilian slaughter and illegal detension. (I'm talking about USA if you can't figure that one out).

It's not a dictatorship, it's a republic which uses a representative democracy, that just happens to only represent corporate and other extremely well-funded interests instead of its actual citizens. Also, you'll be hard-pressed to support the "civilian slaughter" allegation, as everyone else has been (everything seems to be baseless anecdote and hearsay). As for illegal detention and invasion, you're spot on with that, at least.

There isn't really as big of a difference between the US and China governments. Here in the US, they're usually pretty good about giving you an "illusion of freedom and choice". The corrupt end result isn't really different. It's a government for the corporate and moneyed interests.

As another poster pointed out earlier, it's the difference between covert and overt; the US tries to obfuscate how much freedoms are limited and how little influence the people have compared to corporations and the top 1%, whereas China makes no secret of the fact that it is an empire.

[mangles the fuck out of everything so i CBA to fix it on a tablet after three tries]

Not only did you insert your own text and mangle a quote making it look like I said things I didn't, but you ignore the limitations of the technology at that time or the fact that GBUs (GPS-guided bombs) are a far more recent advancement (and a source of some lament for pilots, much as we techs lament not needing to think or be good to do our jobs anymore).

That said, cost is certainly a factor, though in the first gulf war the main targets were tank and artillery groups, and runways, where dumb and semi-guided munitions were sufficient. This last decade saw the first truly extensive use of laser- and GPS-guided munitions.

EDIT:Fuck you for quote mangling and making me fix at least enough so what I wrote in this post is clearly from this post.

This seems potentially huge for Ubuntu, and therefore a 'great leap forward' (sorry...) for Linux on the desktop. Will be interesting to see how Canonical negotiate the moral issues of working with the Chinese government (in particular with regard to censorship, limiting freedom of expression).

Oh you mean the country that persecutes, imprisons and murders its own people for simply expressing an opinion?

Shame on any Western company for doing business with the Chinese government.

[mangles the fuck out of everything so i CBA to fix it on a tablet after three tries]

Not only did you insert your own text and mangle a quote making it look like I said things I didn't, but you ignore the limitations of the technology at that time or the fact that GBUs (GPS-guided bombs) are a far more recent advancement (and a source of some lament for pilots, much as we techs lament not needing to think or be good to do our jobs anymore).

That said, cost is certainly a factor, though in the first gulf war the main targets were tank and artillery groups, and runways, where dumb and semi-guided munitions were sufficient. This last decade saw the first truly extensive use of laser- and GPS-guided munitions.

EDIT:Fuck you for quote mangling and making me fix at least enough so what I wrote in this post is clearly from this post.

I don't know where you are getting that supposed lamenting of pilots from in regards to JDAMs but as a person who spent twenty years in a job that brought him into direct contact with pilots tasked with dropping bombs I never once met one that wasn't enthusiastic about the capabilities of JDAMs, or as you call them "GPS-guided bombs."

GBU also simply means guided bomb and that guidance can come from other things besides GPS, such as lasers. GBUs are not a "recent advancement." How extensively, and why, certain types have been used is another matter.

What could go wrong by allowing a dictatorship with a penchant for theft of intellectual property and surveillance to contribute code to Ubuntu?

nothing more wrong than a quasi-dictatorship with a penchant for invasion, civilian slaughter and illegal detension. (I'm talking about USA if you can't figure that one out).

It's not a dictatorship, it's a republic which uses a representative democracy, that just happens to only represent corporate and other extremely well-funded interests instead of its actual citizens. Also, you'll be hard-pressed to support the "civilian slaughter" allegation, as everyone else has been (everything seems to be baseless anecdote and hearsay). As for illegal detention and invasion, you're spot on with that, at least.

There isn't really as big of a difference between the US and China governments. Here in the US, they're usually pretty good about giving you an "illusion of freedom and choice". The corrupt end result isn't really different. It's a government for the corporate and moneyed interests.

As another poster pointed out earlier, it's the difference between covert and overt; the US tries to obfuscate how much freedoms are limited and how little influence the people have compared to corporations and the top 1%, whereas China makes no secret of the fact that it is an empire.

Sorry to say it but one has to be quite anti-American, ignorant or delusional to compare freedoms in America to freedoms in China.

Not like they're getting the revenue right now anyway, apart from government computers. I for one welcome tighter security in Linux so QQ and other potential malware vectors can be reined in.

Ahahah. Tighter security in Linux.

You amuse me child.

Windywoo wrote:

His opinion, particularly about Intellectual property showed a very US centric viewpoint. The fact that it is a reader favourite shows the political bias on this site. On a technical website why does a politically biased post become reader favourite when it had no technical points. I didn't think once about the politics involved when I read the article, but clearly on an American website that's the first thing the readers jump to when they hear mention of China.

It isn't a US centric viewpoint; it is reality. The fact that you don't like that reality doesn't make it any less true.

Though it is arguable that China is more oligarchical than dictatorial.

grogje wrote:

Historically speaking, there is the fire bombing of Germany, and Japan, and of course the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

A) All of these were done during a time of total war.

B) All of these were designed to break the spirits of their targets.

C) It is a matter of historical record that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a major part of ending the war in Japan when it did, as well as preventing the occupation of a lot more land by the USSR.

When you are at total war, everyone in the enemy's country is a target, and US and Soviet hegemony has basically prevented any civilized nation from engaging in total war since then. It was simply accepted.

Quote:

Then there's the widespread use of carpet bombing, napalm and agent orange in SE Asia.

War sucks.

Quote:

And of course the widely documented slaughter in Central America, some of which at least was co-ordinated by the CIA.

I think most people in the US were pretty unhappy about this. There was a big scandal over it.

Quote:

And more recently, many people see the US military invasion as the proximate cause of the 100,000s of dead civilians in Iraq.

This is complicated. They killed a dictator who was suppressing a lot of ethnic tensions, and the people there then promptly went into slaughtering each other wholesale, whereas it has been somewhat toned down while Saddam was in power (not that people weren't dying... just not in droves).

So yes, the American invasion allowed for it to happen, but the Americans certainly tried to stop it.

sporkwitch wrote:

As another poster pointed out earlier, it's the difference between covert and overt; the US tries to obfuscate how much freedoms are limited and how little influence the people have compared to corporations and the top 1%, whereas China makes no secret of the fact that it is an empire.

Thing is, the US is a very free country. There are people who are nutters who don't understand this and believe in crazed conspiracy theories, but there is massive anti-Obama sentiment in the US and (lo and behold) no mass arrests of said people.

What could go wrong by allowing a dictatorship with a penchant for theft of intellectual property and surveillance to contribute code to Ubuntu?

nothing more wrong than a quasi-dictatorship with a penchant for invasion, civilian slaughter and illegal detension. (I'm talking about USA if you can't figure that one out).

It's not a dictatorship, it's a republic which uses a representative democracy, that just happens to only represent corporate and other extremely well-funded interests instead of its actual citizens. Also, you'll be hard-pressed to support the "civilian slaughter" allegation, as everyone else has been (everything seems to be baseless anecdote and hearsay). As for illegal detention and invasion, you're spot on with that, at least.

I see, they are only civilians when they are American.

I have a standing invitation open for people to submit non-anecdotal evidence, evidence that could actually withstand even the most basic of scrutiny. In trying myself to find some, and in asking for those making the same allegations as you to provide some, no one ever has (in fact, they usually point to five articles all referencing the same anecdotal report devoid of ANY actual evidence). I would be in no way surprised to know that the US was less discriminate than they claim to be, but the fact is, there's simply nothing remotely credible to base it on. It's not like the way the US keeps putting totalitarian regimes in power only to have to go in and remove them later; there IS solid evidence of that. Where is the credible evidence of widespread and indiscriminate slaughter of civilians? Where is there indication of more than a few tragic incidents of people losing it, or bad intel? The allegation, after all, is of indifference, not hurting the kid standing next to the target.

I think what rubs folks the wrong way, US citizens included, is that our gov't feels if there's a problem the only way to handle it is to go in cowboy-style with guns blazing and force your way down everyone's throat.

Machiavelli wrote long ago that the fastest way to piss off another country was to be seen as a foreign invader/occupier that sends military over first to "secure" the place.

The fastest way to make friends with another country was to be send business folks over to colonize a small part and open a trading post. From there, the locals will meet other folks just like them (although foreigners from another land), and they can strike up conversations as equals to form business relationships that ultimately both countries can prosper from.

The US does a good job of doing the former, and burning a shit-ton of bridges along the way (or having to rebuild and reburn the same fucking bridges over and over, ie: the middle-east, afghanistan). China has been prospering lately b/c it does the latter.

When folks get po'ed about military occupation, they want to feel that the occupying force is just indiscriminantly killing all kinds of civilians. A lot of it is propoganda, even by our own news agencies, which love to stir the pot. You're right, there are instances of nut-jobs going on a killing spree in a village. But, those are pretty isolated. 99% of the folks that we killed were killed for good reason. But, it still upsets a country when a foreign occupier shows up with unstoppable force and starts killing folks .. anyone.

What could go wrong by allowing a dictatorship with a penchant for theft of intellectual property and surveillance to contribute code to Ubuntu?

This is one aspect of stories like this that really somewhat baffle me and that is how companies can blithely provide services to countries like China knowing who they are and what they typically do? I'd be curious as to what the reasoning process on this was or if it was simply "all about the benjamins".

I guess it's only fair. Linux and China go hand in hand. Both are trying to break free from the status quo, both are powers in certain areas and are looking to expand on to a more consumer market, and most importantly, both are governed by lunatics.

Edit: Go ahead fanboys, downrate me. But while Linus may be a brilliant man, he is also a stubborn douche, and unfortunately, the Linux community is filled with guys like him. You just have to follow the mailing lists to see how many good ideas get thrown out the garbage bin because these wannabe-leaders just don't feel like it.

I'm not sure China is governed by lunatics.

In Western democracies we tend to get lawyers as our leaders: people who are good at convincing other people that they are right, and sensing what they need to say or do to carry the crowd.

In China they tend to have engineers running things.

I really don't want to live under a Chinese style technocracy (which at heart it is, it has much more in common with other Confucian governments like South Korea and Japan than a tyranny), but you have to admit that they have been managing their growth and economy better than the West has recently.

As I recall, their (state owned) national savings are about the same size as the US's national debt, and they give more money as loans to other states - and on better terms without ideological conditions like market liberalisation - than the World Bank does.

Now let's see how long it takes for the champions of free speech here to down rate my criticism to oblivion, I'll be really surprised if it doesn't happen.

Have a little more faith, friend - you're currently +16 (+26/-10). We're not ALL godawful insular xenophobes.

FWIW, I don't really trust your government as far as I can throw it, but the internet has made it far, far more obvious that nobody with any sense really trusts their government and no government is pure as the driven snow - so that makes it easier to empathize with citizens of most any government. People are people.

They're fairly core features in Linux; it doesn't matter how barebones you go, you'll have SSH.

Um, what? No. In fact, if you install Ubuntu Server from a standard medium, you won't have SSH unless you explicitly check a box that's off by default. (Which pretty much everybody does, but the point remains, SSH is off by default.)

I think you're mistaking starting up the daemon for the service not being there.

There you have it: look ma, no sshd! look ma, sshd! look ma, no sshd again!

There's nothing weirdly bound-in about ssh or sshd on a Linux system, it's modular. Almost everything is, which is pretty much the whole point of Linux design. You want built-in-and-impossible-to-get-rid-of, there's Windows and OS X. You want modular design, there's Linux and BSD.

In case anybody is struggling with the above:

The OpenSSH server, when installed, is a binary file run from /usr/sbin/sshd. (The client is run from /usr/bin/ssh.)

The whole "service automatically starting" bit works like this: the startup script is /etc/init.d/openssh, which is only present if openssh-server is installed. It automatically starts when the network comes up due to a similar script in /etc/network/if-up.d/openssh-server (which is slightly odd, since most services come up or down with runlevel changes by symlinking the /etc/init.d script from an /etc/rc*.d/ directory).

What could go wrong by allowing a dictatorship with a penchant for theft of intellectual property and surveillance to contribute code to Ubuntu?

nothing more wrong than a quasi-dictatorship with a penchant for invasion, civilian slaughter and illegal detension. (I'm talking about USA if you can't figure that one out).

Watch this.

The U.S.A. is wrong, their methods are wrong, they fucking suck at everything they do. Every last citizen contributes to a global plutocracy. Their corporations rape and pillage other countries, their military is full of butchers with a penchant for human flesh. There is not a single citizen in the country that isn't so morbidly obese or related to someone so morbidly obese that their footsteps cause earthquakes around the globe.

...

There ain't a laser on my forehead. The quasi-dictatorship doesn't seem to be working. Now, go translate what I said to Mandarin Chinese and post it on a Chinese news site, replacing U.S.A. with China. Bonus points if you do it while in China. I'd see you when you get out of your prison labor camp - if you got out.

That's probably correct, but not accurate. You can turn a Linux or BSD installation into an "built-in-and-impossible-to-get-rid-of" one just as well (OSx is BSD after all). You can get modular with Windows as well (there's a special version for it, that I just don't remember the name). OSx I'll leave at that...

That's probably correct, but not accurate. You can turn a Linux or BSD installation into an "built-in-and-impossible-to-get-rid-of" one just as well (OSx is BSD after all). You can get modular with Windows as well (there's a special version for it, that I just don't remember the name). OSx I'll leave at that...

I think you missed what I was replying to, which was the notion that SSH (and, presumably, I dunno, openvpn? other stuff?) was somehow so magically baked into Linux that it would "always be there" no matter what an entity trying to build a distro might do.

Not like they're getting the revenue right now anyway, apart from government computers. I for one welcome tighter security in Linux so QQ and other potential malware vectors can be reined in.

Ahahah. Tighter security in Linux.

You amuse me child.

Windywoo wrote:

His opinion, particularly about Intellectual property showed a very US centric viewpoint. The fact that it is a reader favourite shows the political bias on this site. On a technical website why does a politically biased post become reader favourite when it had no technical points. I didn't think once about the politics involved when I read the article, but clearly on an American website that's the first thing the readers jump to when they hear mention of China.

It isn't a US centric viewpoint; it is reality. The fact that you don't like that reality doesn't make it any less true.

Though it is arguable that China is more oligarchical than dictatorial.

grogje wrote:

Historically speaking, there is the fire bombing of Germany, and Japan, and of course the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

A) All of these were done during a time of total war.

B) All of these were designed to break the spirits of their targets.

C) It is a matter of historical record that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a major part of ending the war in Japan when it did, as well as preventing the occupation of a lot more land by the USSR.

When you are at total war, everyone in the enemy's country is a target, and US and Soviet hegemony has basically prevented any civilized nation from engaging in total war since then. It was simply accepted.

Quote:

Then there's the widespread use of carpet bombing, napalm and agent orange in SE Asia.

War sucks.

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And of course the widely documented slaughter in Central America, some of which at least was co-ordinated by the CIA.

I think most people in the US were pretty unhappy about this. There was a big scandal over it.

Quote:

And more recently, many people see the US military invasion as the proximate cause of the 100,000s of dead civilians in Iraq.

This is complicated. They killed a dictator who was suppressing a lot of ethnic tensions, and the people there then promptly went into slaughtering each other wholesale, whereas it has been somewhat toned down while Saddam was in power (not that people weren't dying... just not in droves).

So yes, the American invasion allowed for it to happen, but the Americans certainly tried to stop it.

sporkwitch wrote:

As another poster pointed out earlier, it's the difference between covert and overt; the US tries to obfuscate how much freedoms are limited and how little influence the people have compared to corporations and the top 1%, whereas China makes no secret of the fact that it is an empire.

Thing is, the US is a very free country. There are people who are nutters who don't understand this and believe in crazed conspiracy theories, but there is massive anti-Obama sentiment in the US and (lo and behold) no mass arrests of said people.

Okay. Number one, it's damn late here in the UK and I kind of want to go to sleep.

Number two, this thread spun off wildly and I feel guilty for even replying to you instead of ignoring it.

Number three, you appear to have traded your humanity for... something. Justifications you offer including 'war sucks' and 'but it was total war, sir, don't give me a detention please!' and other such foolishness. I'm not even going to waste my time pointing out the emotional disconnect you display in your post, but a simple manufactured fact you propogate so effortlessly, that the unprecedented slaughter of millions of civilians somehow 'saved' the lives of US army personnel is flat out false (and I love how civilian life is somehow 'obviously' inferior to army personnel. You are a true Salah-ud-din, my good Sir).

As a rule of thumb, when legitimate historians and scholars have a mass debate which can easily be seen through a quick search. or even on the bloody well referenced wiki page, and a buffoon on a comment thread claims there is no debate and the truth is obvious, tell the buffoon to get lost.

Number four, enough time has passed for there to be strong body of scholarship on the run-up to the Iraq war and the American policy objectives and responsibility for the slaughter that followed. Again, you're a buffoon, get lost or learn to read and learn before you speak.

I'm tired and cranky and don't normally feed buffoons, but your level of arrogance and offensive disregard for human life is breathtaking.

Maybe they will just start coding in Chinese and no western hackers will be able to understand the code base (joking - I know it's trivial to translate source code, although not so much for comments and documentation).

Not trivial when the context sets the character/s to be used not the other way around